Palmer: On energy, Clark goes where Campbell didn’t

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun10.01.2012

VICTORIA - The Christy Clark B.C. Liberal government is reviving the idea of burning natural gas to make electricity, an option that was a non-starter with her predecessor Gordon Campbell.Wayne Leidenfrost
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VICTORIA - The Christy Clark B.C. Liberal government is reviving the idea of burning natural gas to make electricity, an option that was a non-starter with her predecessor Gordon Campbell.

Campbell’s climate plan dedicated the province to clean electricity, mainly hydro and wind power, and outright disdained natural gas, which is generally regarded as the cleanest of the fossil fuels.

But natural gas has been making a comeback, partly because of a price slump that makes gas-fired turbines one of the cheapest options for generating electricity, partly in recognition that it may be needed to provide at least some of the fuelling needs of a trio of liquefied natural gas plants proposed for the northwest coast.

“We may see some of it used in the refrigeration piece,” Energy Minister Rich Coleman said this week, referring to the way that LNG plants function as giant, power-hungry refrigerators, converting the gas to a liquid that can be pumped into tankers and shipped to Asian markets.

“Our liquefied natural gas plan really does contemplate the possibility of needing to use natural gas to shape some power,” he continued during an interview with me on Voice of BC on Shaw TV, adding that it could also be used as a supplement to intermittent sources of electricity such as wind and run-of-river power.

More telling than those comments from the minister are the contents of the latest version of BC Hydro’s integrated resource plan, released late last month as part of a public consultation process on the giant utility’s future as a provider of the province’s electricity needs.

Among the recommendations in the plan are some mainstays of earlier resource plans. Hydro is urged to rededicate itself to conservation by boosting its already ambitious Power Smart targets by 12 per cent over the decade.

Site C, the proposed hydroelectric dam on the Peace River, continues to figure prominently in the plan, albeit as a project that won’t begin delivering power for another 10 years at the earliest.

Other recommendations that would not have been out of place in a Gordon Campbell integrated resource plan were the calls for Hydro to add a sixth generating station to a vacant bay at the Revelstoke Dam and to “acquire up to 2,000 gigawatt hours from clean energy producers. “

But I was struck by the intrusion into the mix of some options that did not figure into Campbell’s plans. For instance, to meet its power needs in the short term, Hydro is urged to “fill the gap with a combination of market purchases first, power from the Columbia River Treaty second and extending the existing backup use of Burrard Thermal Generating station if required.”

Campbell wanted the province to be self-sufficient in producing electricity, not to rely on market purchases from other jurisdictions.

He saw the province’s power entitlement under the Columbia River treaty as a source of revenue, not domestic consumption here in B.C.

And when the utilities commission ruled that Burrard Thermal could be used to meet some of Hydro’s needs, Campbell interfered directly in the commission to ensure that wouldn’t happen.

Burrard Thermal is, of course, gas-fired. And that was among several of the plan’s dozen or so recommendations that raised the prospect of using natural gas to generate electricity over the next 20 years.

One recommendation, echoing Coleman’s comments this week, says that on the north coast, reliance on clean energy should be “backed up by gas-fired generation.”

Another urges that “local gas-fired generation” should be an option for meeting the growing need for electricity in the northeast, where gas extraction and production is expected to double over the decade.

Some of the shift in thinking about natural gas is recognition that Hydro probably can’t supply all of the projected power needs of the emerging LNG industry without some reliance on burning gas to make electricity.

But some of it is also a more realistic take on the changing economics of the energy sector and the emergence of gas as a convenient, relatively cheap source of power for making electricity.

Hydro itself, the plan notes, wants to “work with industry to explore natural gas as a resource option, as it is the next-lowest-cost alternative for adding additional capacity.

“Natural-gas-fired plants can be located close to where the electricity is needed, reducing the need to build new transmission.”

In short, if the province is prepared to export natural gas to other jurisdictions as a cheap feedstock for making electricity, why not do the same at home, particularly if that would fill some gaps in domestic demand and fuel the expansion of the LNG industry?

The ready answer is that gas-fired generation is neither renewable nor emissions free, as the driving force behind B.C.’s last electricity resourcing plan would be the first to testify.

But Gordon Campbell is gone from office and this latest edition of the Hydro resource plan is further evidence that some of his priorities have departed along with him.

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